One Headlight
by justcallmefaye
Summary: Saber gets her motorcyle, and while there is room enough for two, there is nowhere for them to go. Saber/Irisviel.


Disclaimer: _Fate/Zero_ belongs to Type-Moon and therefore isn't mine. Neither is the song "One Headlight", which belongs to The Wallflowers.

A/N: There needs to be more Saber/Iri in the land of fanfiction (and fanart, and fanvids, and where is the fandom and why don't they adore these two as much as they should?), so I am attempting to rectify that. They're surprisingly hard to write (I think it's altogether possible that they have _too_ much angst), but that's no reason not to try. So I hope you enjoy, and reviews would be love!

A/N the second: Oh, and this is an AU-ish riff on the episode where Saber gets her motorcycle, but you probably already knew that.

* * *

><p><em><strong>one headlight<strong>_

_(so long ago i don't remember when_

_that's when they said i lost my only friend)_

"It's a present from Kiritsugu."

Saber knows that is a lie; the motorcycle is plainly a gift from Irisviel herself, and she's trying to shift the credit in an attempt to repair the gaping chasm that now exists between Servant and Master, a regrettable but inevitable result of their clashing moralities. It is not a gap that could be closed, not when Kiritsugu cannot so much as permit her to perform her duties; he refuses to let her honorably defeat the other Servants, preferring to use her as a diversion so that he may slaughter their unwitting Masters and secure an unequivocal and absolute victory.

He is ruthless, but Saber also knows that she cannot object to the ruthlessness itself, as she exercised her own cold justice as king, and perhaps that is why she hates the man so much. Perhaps she is disconcerted to see herself reflected in someone as dark as he, or perhaps she is simply incensed that fate and circumstance seem to have rewarded him where they have not rewarded her, as Kiritsugu has the support and love of a kind and compassionate woman, and Saber would give anything in this world or any other to have Irisviel's unwavering devotion.

She desires it, almost more than she desires the Grail itself, with a strength that makes her shudder.

But Saber does not voice her suspicions or her misgivings out loud, because Irisviel wants them to be happy, as if the three of them aren't the most dysfunctional family to ever masquerade upon the earth, and she does not wish to disappoint the other woman so blatantly. She does not wish to see the light drain from her excited crimson eyes and leave them as blank and hollow as the blood-soaked pools they appear to be.

"I'll have to thank him," she chooses to say instead, even as she is drawn towards the vehicle's side; there is something terribly attractive about the brazen machine, an irresistible urge that mirrors the haunting murmur in her soul that always drags her gaze to Irisviel.

She swings a leg over the bike and cranks the key in the ignition, causing the engine to growl to life in the most satisfying way, and she _likes_ it. Power is something she is accustomed to wielding, both as warrior and king, but this is different. This is almost feral, like a boiling in her blood.

Irisviel, still hovering besides Maiya, clasps her hands together. "Do you like it?"

Saber grins, a curve of gleaming teeth. "It is wonderful," she replies, and her fingers tighten on the handlebars until the leather of her gloves creak as she tries to dispel some of this heady intoxication through sheer physical force. But squeezing her fists is insufficient balm, and something swells in her chest, bubbling up behind her lips and seeking the first opportunity for freedom.

The homunculus is pleased with this reaction, and she nods, snowy hair swinging. "Oh, good! I was hoping that you would. It's rather more like a horse than the car, so I thought it might be more familiar to you. You should take it back to base, or for a spin around town if you want; Maiya and I will return home in the car."

Saber is about to agree, but the force behind her lips bucks her control and objects. "No, you should come with me."

Irisviel blinks. "I—what?"

The Servant grimaces inwardly, but her voice is continuing on without her conscious awareness or approval, subsisting solely on this unfamiliar thrumming in her veins. "I cannot protect you if you are not near me," she says, and she is relieved, for that is logical, defendable.

But Irisviel hesitates. "Oh, I don't know, Saber…Maiya is more than capable."

Something hot flashes through the knight, burning a blazing path through her entire body, and this is jealousy, she dimly realizes: this is thwarted desire. "Maiya is not a Servant," she retorts, her voice clipped. "She cannot possibly protect you from Rider or Berserker; she cannot even protect you from Kotomine Kirei, a mere human. No, I was charged by my Master to guarantee your safety, and my code as a knight will not permit me to act otherwise."

The Einzbern's brow furrows, and Saber is wounded anew by this hesitation—does Irisviel really wish to abandon her so urgently? Has she been offended somehow? Why else would she object to remaining in Saber's care?

But then the Einzbern capitulates. "I suppose that is true," she concedes quietly, but there is audible reluctance glinting on the edges of the words. "Maiya, take the car back and secure the perimeter. Saber and I will be along shortly."

"Yes, madam," the soldier replies, and she heads briskly to the sleek silver car.

Saber swallows as Irisviel approaches, and she keeps her gaze pointedly pinned to the empty air in front of them as the other woman mounts the vehicle, sliding into painful proximity—her legs follow the bent line of the Servant's, her arms wind around her waist, and she leans into the curve of Saber's back, resting her cheek in the shallow depression between the knight's powerful shoulder blades.

Saber's heart stumbles at the aching intimacy of this unexpected embrace, even as the touch soothes the storm in her soul; for all her indecision, Irisviel has not held herself at any sort of distance, instead all but collapsing against the Servant, and Saber wonders again why she objected in the first place. But asking would invite answers, and she does not want to do the slightest thing that would cause Irisviel to shift away or raise her head.

So she simply twists the throttle and lets the motorcycle take them into the night.

* * *

><p>Traffic is light at this late hour, and Saber slips easily through the few cars, dancing from one golden pool of lamplight to the next with flawlessly executed control and grace. Still Irisviel clings to her: her arms tighten every so often, and sometimes she changes the angle of her face, burrowing more into Saber's back or resting more gently on a cheek.<p>

Saber longs to ask her so many things, both simple and complex, but all of them muddy on her tongue, and she only grits her teeth and drives and tries not to focus on the fragile creature who has molded herself to her body.

She cannot focus on anything else; even the asphalt beneath them is a secondary consideration.

Eventually, as they are stopped at a red light and as the engine snarls and hums between their legs, Irisviel speaks, and her voice is delicate and thin—the shallow crust of ice on heavy snow. "Saber," she whispers, "I am tired."

The Servant acknowledges that with half a nod. "I shall take us home directly," she replies, disappointed to return but concerned for the other woman's comfort and well-being.

Irisviel's fingers clutch fistfuls of Saber's jacket. "No, that's…not what I meant," she corrects quickly.

Curiously, Saber guides the motorcycle to a vacant spot and cuts the engine, and in the ensuing silence, she can hear her Master's wife more clearly.

"Destiny…is such a burden, isn't it?" Irisviel whispers, and her hands relax once more; she is incapable of sustaining such exertion. "At first, when you start carrying it, you can walk along fine—your head high, your pace brisk. But as time goes on, it wears on you, and you begin to stumble and to trip, and you begin to think, _If only I could set this down; if only I set it down for a moment, then perhaps I would have the strength to go on._" She pauses, holding a breath, and asks upon the exhale, "Do you ever feel like that?"

"Often," Saber admits. "The chains on my heart are very ancient and heavy, indeed. But if you succumb to that weight, to the temptation to set it aside…I don't know if you'd ever be able to lift it again."

There is a hitch in Irisviel's voice as she confesses, "The Grail is killing me, Saber. Sliver by sliver, it is destroying my body, my mind. I can feel myself unraveling, and that is a terrible thing. Were it not for the grace of Avalon, I would already be nothing more than its comatose puppet, lingering on the edge of death and unable to forestall the plunge."

Something acrid sits on Saber's tongue, a black taste, an unholy revulsion; from a distance, she recognizes that this is the bitter tang of helplessness. "You are…dying?"

"I did not want to tell you," she hurriedly says. "You have so many battles left to fight, and I did not want to be a distraction. I thought that if I insisted upon remaining close to you, you might realize that I required Avalon's supplement, and then you would worry, and I…" She trails off and shakes her head, her brow rolling on Saber's back. "I would never forgive myself if I distracted you at a crucial moment. I could not bear being responsible for your defeat."

The Servant shifts her weight, uncomfortable with the nature of the inevitable, and she reaches down, pressing an arm against Irisviel's, which still encircle her waist. It is a gesture of sympathy, of solidarity, and it is terribly insufficient, but it is all she has to offer.

"We are both running out of time," she observes at length, her tone both flat and hollow. "Regardless of victory or defeat, neither of us will exist in this world in a week, or even in a few days. It has all been a desperate gamble from the beginning, and all that is left is for us to play these last few hands."

Irisviel's breath shakes in her throat. "I don't want to lose you."

"I don't want to lose you, either," Saber quietly agrees, and her expression twists, upset by the cruelty of fate. "But for all the power we both have, as Servant and Grail-vessel, neither of us can change that. Our strength is just an illusion; I wonder if our will is one, too."

Irisviel is quiet for a moment, a tangled, condensed sort of quiet that she can't quite contain. "What if we run, Saber?" she asks suddenly, her words quick, her heartbeat quicker. "What if we leave Fuyuki and never look back? What would become of us then? Would we be free of the Grail War, free to live our lives?"

The Servant closes her eyes, the lashes lead-heavy, and fights the contradicting rise and fall in her chest. "That would mean abandoning our vows," she reminds the other woman. "You promised Kiritsugu that you would help him achieve his dream, and I swore an oath to fight for him until the end. And regardless of that, I need to save my people, one last time."

The pressure of Irisviel's embrace increases, and her voice is muffled in Saber's jacket.

"What if we run?" she asks again, heartfelt and hoarse. "Saber, please, I…I know your honor is holding you here, and I know you think you failed as king, and I know that I promised Kiritsugu, but I want none of that to _matter_. I want only us to matter, only us and the destinies that _we_ choose. Is that horribly ungrateful and selfish of me? It is, isn't it? But do I even care that it is? Oh, Saber, take me away from here," she begs. "I want to see the world. I want to hold my darling Illya again. I want to be more than this shell I was created to be!"

The sentiments and their poignant desperation stab at Saber's ears, and she is twisting on the seat, straining at the waist until she can see Irisviel's tear-stained face and take those porcelain cheeks in her gloved hands, and then she doesn't know what she is doing except that her heart is breaking and the scattering shards are piercing her in a dozen different places and it _hurts_, it hurts it hurts it hurts…

She only means to say something, only vaguely plans to offer comfort, but it is all too much and not enough and she is left with nothing but the chill night air and the burning, futile love that overflows her chest. And even that is not really hers, as it belongs to this bewildering, beautiful girl who defies logic and description and urges Saber to defy destiny itself, to destroy her dreams and forge new ones from the ashes.

Thoughtlessly, unstoppably, Saber pulls Irisviel close until she is covering the other woman's mouth with her own and kissing her with nearly bruising force, for as a person she is rough and hard and clumsy and uncertain, and she can express herself no other way. Irisviel stiffens in shock at this unexpected contact, but the reflexive resistance melts from her body almost instantly, supple wax before Saber's brilliant flame, and she strives to match her knight kiss for desperate kiss, needing this just as badly as Saber, if not even more so.

Seconds may have passed, or minutes, or hours, and Saber pulls away, fingers still clutching, and her heart pounds in her ears, drowning out all sounds, even the haggard scratch of the heavy breaths in her throat. She can hardly think, she is so dizzy, but Irisviel's eyes are the only anchor she has, so she stares into them and rasps, "You are more than a shell. Never say that again."

She nods her head, a meek dip. "O-Okay, Saber. I won't. I promise."

"You are…you are…" But Saber cannot find the words, and she paws aimlessly at Irisviel's cheek until her fingers return to tangle in the silver-snow strands of her hair. Bowing her head into the crook of the Einzbern's neck, the Servant clings like a child who knows that her most precious possession is about to disappear.

Irisviel tilts her head to the side, resting her cheek comfortably on Saber's golden hair, and smiles sadly as tears roll anew down her face. "We aren't going to run, are we."

She doesn't make it a question.

There isn't any doubt.

Saber inhales shakily, and the breath trembles throughout her whole body. "We can't," she says, and that breath is no sturdier than the last.

"I understand. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you," Irisviel murmurs, and she closes her eyes and fights to memorize the feel of the Servant in her arms. "Then…then I am afraid we have very little time left to share."

Saber lifts her head, lifts her head and studies Irisviel for a moment that stretches on towards infinity. "If you will have me, I would stay by your side until the end."

She trails her fingertips down the curve of the Servant's cheek. "Of course I will have you, Saber. You are my brave knight. I'm afraid you have no choice but to protect me until our last breaths. Such is your duty."

There is a touch of teasing in her tone, but Saber treats it with the seriousness that it deserves.

"It is no duty," she whispers in reply. "It is my joy and my privilege. I would have it no other way."

* * *

><p>There is a moment, when Kiritsugu commands her to destroy the Grail, in which Saber's agony does not derive from being robbed of the chance to save her nation from her own ineptitude but rather comes from the fact that this gleaming chalice is all that remains of Irisviel, and she cannot destroy what she swore to protect.<p>

She wonders, briefly, if she could still make a wish, for now that wish would be this: for the Grail to return what it has stolen, to grant form and life to Irisviel once more so that her princess might be able to fulfill her own dreams—her own, Irisviel's, not borrowed shadows of Kiritsugu's. To see the world, to see her child.

To live, to love, even if it would be without her loyal knight by her side.

But Kiritsugu calls to her again, and she hates him in that moment more than anything she has ever hated before: more than the Saxons, more than the rebellions, more than herself. She hates that he has the power to warp noble Excalibur into the instrument of her undoing, and she hates that she can do nothing to stop it.

She screams as the sword comes down, as the blinding light engulfs them all.

The last thing she sees is the Grail disintegrating before Excalibur's holy might, and the last thing she thinks is, _Irisviel, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I couldn't save you._

And the last thing she hears, faint as an echo: _No, my knight, you did._

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><p><em>(we can drive it home with one headlight)<em>


End file.
